(L&N) The day before the day before yesterday and the day after the day after tomorrow.

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eldin raigmore
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(L&N) The day before the day before yesterday and the day after the day after tomorrow.

Post by eldin raigmore »

About deictic words for days a certain few days ago or a certain few days from now.

If yesterday is today-1 and tomorrow is today+1,
English has the archaic or obsolescent or rare “overmorrow” for the day after tomorrow (today+2),
and both archaic “ereyesterday” and neologistic “nudiustertian” for the day before yesterday (today-2).

Several familiar natlangs have less awkward, less rare, less marked words for today+-2. Apparently German’s look like English’s but aren’t marked, as they are in English. (Is that correct?)

Apparently, several familiar natlangs, have similarly unmarked words for “the day before the day before yesterday” (today-3) and “the day after the day after tomorrow” (today+3).

Quick question 1: Do your natlangs, or those you are fluent in, have such words? (I.e. today+-2 and today+-3?) Which natlangs and what words?

Seemingly most of them don’t have anything for “the day before the day before the day before yesterday” (today-4) nor “the day after the day after the day after tomorrow” (today+4) that don’t sound awkward to their speakers.

Quick question 2: do you know of any natlangs that do have unmarked words for today-4 and/or today+4? Which?

…..

Last question: I remember reading somewhere that some natlang has words for today+-n for n up to 10. Any idea which language that is? Any citation? (An online citation would be appreciated, but any citation at all would be more than I have right now!)
Last edited by eldin raigmore on 23 Aug 2021 23:36, edited 1 time in total.
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eldin raigmore
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Re: The day before the day before yesterday and the day after the day after tomorrow.

Post by eldin raigmore »

According to a poster on Quora, Nepali has words for today+-2 and today+-3 and today+-4.
https://www.quora.com/Which-languages-h ... -yesterday
https://www.quora.com/Which-languages-h ... p-Bhandari.
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Re: The day before the day before yesterday and the day after the day after tomorrow.

Post by Flavia »

In Polish today-2 is przedwczoraj (beforeyesterday) and today+2 is pojutrze (aftertomorrow). One can repeat the przed- and po- like in great-great-grandmothers, creating przedprzedwczoraj for today-3 etc.
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Re: The day before the day before yesterday and the day after the day after tomorrow.

Post by Creyeditor »

German has übermorgen and vorgestern, which are normal words. I sometimes use überübermorgen and vorvorgestern, but these are marked.
Indonesian has a morphologically simple word for the day after tomorrow: lusa, which is interstimg because the word for tomorrow besok is inherently vague and can also refer to today+3.
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Re: The day before the day before yesterday and the day after the day after tomorrow.

Post by Vlürch »

Finnish has toissapäivä (the day before yesterday) and ylihuominen (the day after tomorrow). The adverbial forms are toissapäivänä and ylihuomenna.

At least the latter is clearly calqued from a Germanic language, presumably specifically Swedish övermorgon. Not sure about the former, I mean apparently Swedish has förrgår but it's not a calque of that so dunno. Literally it's "on the second day" or something like that, but I'd never realised the connection to toinen until looking up its etymology since it's reduced irregularly.

Googling toissatoissapäivä and yliylihuominen and their adverbial forms to see if they exist, apparently some people do use them but to me they just sound wrong. Like... if it's necessary to be explicit about the specific day, I'll just specify the number of days from the current day instead of using any specific term, probably half of the time even with the day before yesterday and the day after tomorrow.
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Re: The day before the day before yesterday and the day after the day after tomorrow.

Post by Khemehekis »

Japanese has ototooi for "the day before yesterday" and asatte for "the day after tomorrow".

In Kankonian, I solved the problem by using two nouns as prepositions: naphet (sunset) is used to indicate the number of days ago something happened, and sasharm (sunrise) to indicate the number of days in the future something will happen: naphet bam (the day before yesterday), sasharm bam (the day after tomorrow), naphet kyu (five days ago), sasharm hosp-hol (forty-four days from now):

Amba wakhiren wakhir meitel na wan naphet em.
camel drink-PST drink previous of 3s sunset three
The camel had its last drink three days ago.
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Re: The day before the day before yesterday and the day after the day after tomorrow.

Post by aliensdrinktea »

Spanish has anteayer (before-yesterday), which in some dialects has apparently shortened to antier. There's also trasanteayer (beyond-before-yesterday) for the day before that, though I don't know if anyone actually uses it. To my knowledge, there's no single-word way to express today+2 or further. (Note: I'm not a native speaker.)
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Re: The day before the day before yesterday and the day after the day after tomorrow.

Post by Dormouse559 »

French has avant-hier for "today-2" and après-demain for "today+2". These can be extended to avant-avant-hier "today-3" and après-après-demain "today+3", but I can't say I've encountered them much, and while it seems like it's possible to just add avant and après ad infinitum, I imagine that would be extremely marked.

Another thing of note is that French has a dedicated word for "the next day" in nonpresent contexts ("that day+1"), le lendemain. For "that day+2", there is le surlendemain. Wiktionnaire has an entry for le sursurlendemain "that day+3" but marks it rare.
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Re: The day before the day before yesterday and the day after the day after tomorrow.

Post by Khemehekis »

Dormouse559 wrote: 12 Aug 2021 03:59 French has avant-hier for "today-2" and après-demain for "today+2". These can be extended to avant-avant-hier "today-3" and après-après-demain "today+3", but I can't say I've encountered them much, and while it seems like it's possible to just add avant and après ad infinitum, I imagine that would be extremely marked.
Wow! Like "my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather"! Sort of?
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Re: The day before the day before yesterday and the day after the day after tomorrow.

Post by Dormouse559 »

Khemehekis wrote: 12 Aug 2021 04:01
Dormouse559 wrote: 12 Aug 2021 03:59 French has avant-hier for "today-2" and après-demain for "today+2". These can be extended to avant-avant-hier "today-3" and après-après-demain "today+3", but I can't say I've encountered them much, and while it seems like it's possible to just add avant and après ad infinitum, I imagine that would be extremely marked.
Wow! Like "my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather"! Sort of?
I guess? It's transparent reduplication of a preposition — nothing special, just not something you'd do unless there was a point to it. My cursory Google searches for extended forms bring up multiple hits where they're used alongside the more common ones for rhetorical effect.

For an example, here's a sentence from a sex-ed document, which uses sursurlendemain in quotes (English translation by me, underlining added):
La pilule du lendemain peut être prise tout de suite après l’activité sexuelle, le lendemain, le surlendemain et même le «sursurlendemain».

[The morning-after pill ("the next-day pill") can be taken immediately after sexual activity, the next day, the day after that and even the day after the day after that.]
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Re: The day before the day before yesterday and the day after the day after tomorrow.

Post by Flavia »

In Polish there's nazajutrz used as "that day+1", for example:
Powiedział, że przyjdzie nazajutrz - he said he will come next day.
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Re: The day before the day before yesterday and the day after the day after tomorrow.

Post by eldin raigmore »

Thanks for all the answers so far! And I will appreciate any further answers anyone has!

……

Does anyone have any ideas about my third question in my OP?
eldin raigmore wrote: 10 Aug 2021 22:04 …..

Last question: I remember reading somewhere that some natlang has words for today+-n for n up to 10. Any idea which language that is? Any citation? (An online citation would be appreciated, but any citation at all would be more than I have right now!)
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Re: The day before the day before yesterday and the day after the day after tomorrow.

Post by clawgrip »

Khemehekis wrote: 12 Aug 2021 02:09 Japanese has ototooi for "the day before yesterday" and asatte for "the day after tomorrow".
It's actually ototoi.

"Three days from now" is shiasatte, and this word is not marked at all. However, "three days ago" sakiototoi is not a word I have really heard. Apparently there is also a word for "four days from now", yaneasatte.

There are also alternate formal versions of all of these:

3 days ago:
plain: sakiototoi 一昨昨日
formal: issakusakujitsu 一昨昨日

2 days ago:
plain: ototoi 一昨日
formal: issakujitsu 一昨日

1 day ago:
plain: kinō 昨日
formal: sakujitsu 昨日

today:
plain: kyō 今日
formal: honjitsu 本日

1 day from now:
plain: ashita 明日
formal: asu, myōnichi 明日

2 days from now:
plain: asatte 明後日
formal: myōgonichi 明後日

3 days from now:
plain/formal: shiasatte 明々後日

4 days from now:
plain/formal: yanoasatte, yaneasatte, yanaasatte 弥の明後日
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Re: The day before the day before yesterday and the day after the day after tomorrow.

Post by Omzinesý »

Vlürch wrote: 12 Aug 2021 02:00 Literally it's "on the second day" or something like that, but I'd never realised the connection to toinen until looking up its etymology since it's reduced irregularly.
Actually, it is not even irregular. Toissa is an archaic Essive form that was made from the consonant stem. It is archaic but fully regular.

Modern
nuore-na miehe-nä
young-ESS man-ESS
'As a young man'

Old
Nuor-ra mies-sä
young-ESS man-ESS

Similarly toissa is just an archaic Essive from the consonant stem

toise-na
other-ESS/LOC
'as another one'
'at another one'

tois-sa
other-ESS/LOC
'as another one'

Similar ones
ynnä ~ yhtenä
huomenna ~ huomenena

It's semantics is still interesting. How does 'another day' start meaning 'the day before yesterday'.
Edit: Actually, 'second' might be a better translation.
My meta-thread: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=5760
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Re: The day before the day before yesterday and the day after the day after tomorrow.

Post by eldin raigmore »

(Thank you, clawgrip and Omzinesy and everyone!)

This topic came up at supper last night, believe it or not!
I was at a club social sitting across from a guy from Egypt whose native language is Arabic (and whose wife is Japanese!).
And languages came up, including this question!

It’s kind of rare, in my experience, to have conversations about the things we talk about here, other than on Internet groups such as this!
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Re: The day before the day before yesterday and the day after the day after tomorrow.

Post by Aevas »

Omzinesý wrote: 18 Aug 2021 16:05It's semantics is still interesting. How does 'another day' start meaning 'the day before yesterday'.
Edit: Actually, 'second' might be a better translation.
The construction (the) other [unit of time] seems to be recurrent in several European languages, at least, when referring to units of time further away from the present.

English has the other day/week 'a few days/weeks ago' (according to Wiktionary the other day is used in the sense of 'the day before yesterday' in Phillippine English). Spanish has el otro día with the same meaning as the English equivalent, though la otra semana seems to be either 'a few weeks ago' or 'next week', if I understand it correctly. Norwegian has hin dagen/hi veka [lit. the other day/week (of two)], meaning either 'the day before yesterday/last week' or 'a few days/weeks ago', depending on dialect (though I get the impression that the former sense is proscribed). Italian has l'altro ieri [lit. the other yesterday] in the sense of 'the day before yesterday'.
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Re: The day before the day before yesterday and the day after the day after tomorrow.

Post by Lambuzhao »

In :lat:

the adverbial nudius + ordinal [MASC.SG.NOM] does the trick:

heri = yesterday
nudius tertius = the day before yesterday
nudius quartus = the day before the day before yesterday
… etc.


Now, :lat: has a word for "the day after tomorrow", which is perendie.

DO they have a word for "the day after the day after tomorrow" ?

Indeed they do.

From some Anglo-Saxon sources (?!) apparently the word is postperendie.

BTW, the Old English for "Day after the day after tomorrow" is oferđrige, also written phrasally as ofer đrige .

And the Old English for the "Day before the day before yesterday" or "ere-yesterday" is ǽrᵹystrandæg.
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Re: The day before the day before yesterday and the day after the day after tomorrow.

Post by eldin raigmore »

No, Lambuzhao, ereyesterday is the day before yesterday.
The day before the day before yesterday is the day before ereyesterday.
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Re: The day before the day before yesterday and the day after the day after tomorrow.

Post by Lambuzhao »

[:x] Whoops! Ur right, of course, Eldin [tick] .

BTW in :grc:

Two days ago/ Day before yesterday is

τριθημέρᾳ
[tri:.thε:.'me.ra:j]

But they also have:

προχθές
[pro.'khthes]



Not 100%, but I believe at least προχθές in some forme still exists in Mod. :ell:

I found another way to express "… days ago" in :lat: :

abinc [X] dies
Where X is the amt. and dies is in the ACC.

Incidentally, this is also used for any other times units ago :

abhinc quattuor *hebdomades
four weeks ago ( *Late :lat: / neologism; also could use similarly Late :lat: septimanas )

abhinc septem menses seven months ago

abhinc trecentos sexaginta quinque annos 365 years ago
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Re: The day before the day before yesterday and the day after the day after tomorrow.

Post by eldin raigmore »

Lambuzhao (and everyone), I think I’d like to expand my question to include;
Last month/year, next month/year, month/year before last, month/year after next,
And especially
Month/year before month/year before last and month/year after month/year after next.
And any other (preferably unmarked, preferably one-word) terms for this+-n month/year.
At least, if anyone wants to contribute some!

I left out “week” only because not every language has weeks; and those that do have “weeks” might have weeks longer or shorter than seven days.

If anyone wants to contribute any example about weeks or seasons or any other time-unit that occurs in some unmarked expression like those we’ve been talking about here, I (for one) will welcome them!

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Edit: @Lambuzhao:
Thanks for the great Latin and Greek in both of your last two posts!

Maybe I should have thanked you on-thread instead of via PM.
Or corrected you via PM instead of on-thread.
Or both.

But anyway, I want you to know I appreciate your posts!
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